


Bellamy's Actual Favourite Things

by lecornergirl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:18:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lecornergirl/pseuds/lecornergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke kisses Bellamy at a party, then finds out he's her Latin TA.</p><p>OR, Bellamy's really into Latin, and Clarke's really into Bellamy speaking Latin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bellamy's Actual Favourite Things

Bellamy used to really love being a TA. It was a stipulation of his grad school funding, but unlike some of his friends in the program, he used to really love teaching undergraduates about the intricacies of Latin. Maybe it was because he was a giant nerd who really loved Latin, maybe because he honestly enjoyed helping students understand concepts they were struggling with.

Regardless of the reason, he used to really love being a TA. Until Clarke Griffin was assigned to his tutorial.

But really, to do the story justice, it ought to be started in the week before classes began in Bellamy’s third year of grad school.

Though Orientation Week is theoretically for freshmen, it’s everyone else who really benefits from it at Ark University. While freshmen are being shown around campus and led to safe, faculty-approved parties by RAs counting down the minutes until they can slip away, the real parties are happening elsewhere.

It was at one of these parties that Bellamy first met Clarke Griffin.

She caught his eye straightaway. Of course she did, she was gorgeous. Summer wasn’t yet over, and she was wearing a blue sundress, and her hair was braided in a crown around her head. She walked in alone, but unlike some of the people who came to parties alone, she didn’t look the least bit bothered by it. He was standing in the corner by the keg, talking to Miller, and when he saw her he actually had to stop talking for a second. Miller followed his gaze, saw the girl his friend was fixated on, and clapped him on the shoulder, exiting stage left with a quick “good luck”.

She was looking around, and just as he was about to take a step towards her she made eye contact with him and fixed him with a stare stern enough to make him stay where he was. She crossed the room quickly, determinedly, stopping far enough in his personal space that he was tempted to take a step back.

She was still giving him the same intense look, as if she was sizing him up. Finally, she seemed to come to some kind of conclusion, because she opened her mouth and spoke.

“So, you know that thing that happens in movies, where a girl walks up to a guy and asks him to kiss her because she’s seen her creepy ex and doesn’t really want to talk to him?”

Bellamy thought he knew where she was going, but he really didn’t want to assume anything, because everyone knows what assuming does. So he settled for nodding instead.

She smiled, letting up on the intensity for about half a second. “Great! So that’s what we’re going to do, in about—” she looked over her shoulder “—right now.”

Then her hand was in his hair, and her lips were on his, and it was all he could do to keep up, to wrap his arms around her, to kiss her back and not just stand there like a moron. It felt like it went on forever, and he kept frantically trying to catalogue every moment, every sensation, because he honestly couldn’t predict what she’d do next but he was afraid she’d walk away as suddenly as she’d walked up to him.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what she did. After she deemed the coast clear, she thanked him with a sincere smile, turned around with an impressive twirl of her skirt, and walked away. Leaving Bellamy stunned and a little bit in love with a girl whose name he didn’t even know.

Fast forward to the first week of classes, and she walks into his Latin 1 tutorial. They see each other at seemingly the same moment, and both freeze a little. She shakes it off faster than he does, turning to talk to the girl next to her. He’s still a little in shock when it’s time to start his tutorial, and to buy time before he has to actually teach anything he has everyone introduce themselves with their year, degree program, and reason for taking Latin 1.

That’s how he learns that Clarke Griffin is a senior, and an Art major, and is taking Latin 1 because she prefers languages to history and managed to talk the dean into letting Latin count for her history requirement. Which nearly sets off Bellamy at first, because history is one of his Actual Favourite Things, and he is prepared to tell Clarke Griffin exactly why this is. But then his brain catches up with the rest of her explanation. If anything tops history on that list, it’s Latin, and Clarke argued herself into a Latin class that isn’t a requirement for her major or her core curriculum.

That’s how he knows he’s in trouble.

It’s simultaneously the longest and shortest semester of his life. On some level, he knows it’s pretty much actively creepy to be literally counting down the days until the semester is over and he’s no longer her TA. However, it would be even more actively creepy to date one of his students, not to mention against pretty much every rule Ark University has.

On another level, it’s gotten to the point where he remembers that kiss every time he closes his eyes. He didn’t even know Clarke’s name at the time, but he knows he wasn’t imagining the electricity, the connection. And judging by the way she’s been behaving, he’s not the only one.

 

*   *  *

 

If Clarke had known the consequences of kissing the stranger with the curly hair and the glasses at the frat party that night, she might not have done it.

Well. She probably would have done it. She did need to avoid Finn, after all. But she probably would have gotten his name first, so she could have a name to apply to the delectable thoughts invading her head at all hours throughout the next week.

Then she walks into her first Latin 1 tutorial, and he’s there. He sees her, she sees him, and she realises three things in quick succession: he’s a grad student, she’s going to get to know him, and he’s probably really good at Latin. Which is great, because—not that she’d ever admit it to anyone—she’s always had a thing for people speaking to her in foreign languages.

Which, consequently, makes the next semester of Latin tutorials an interesting experience. Bellamy is one of those people who doesn’t believe in not speaking Latin just because it’s a dead language, so their tutorials are filled with a lot of oral practice. But Bellamy also believes strongly in the Roman poetic tradition, which means he insists on reciting at least one text for them per tutorial. “So you can really get a feel for the language,” he says, but Clarke’s pretty sure he saw her squirming in her seat when he read Catullus 5 and is now doing it every week to punish her.

So, really, you can’t blame her for asking for a little extra help, for maybe batting her eyelashes a little, for staying behind to ask him questions and letting her hair fall over her shoulder, brushing his back with her chest. He started it, after all.

The semester drags by, but eventually it’s time for the final tutorial of the year. Clarke wonders whether anyone else can hear the slight tension in Bellamy’s voice when he asks her to stay for a moment after class, or if she’s just very attuned to him.

He makes small talk about the course while everyone else clears out, and she fidgets. When he stops talking, and then clears his throat, she looks up, but the words seem to die on their way out. “Clarke, I…” he starts to say. He doesn’t quite know what he’s trying to express, but in his eyes is the same look she saw at the party after she’d kissed him. So she does that again, because it’s seemed to work pretty well in the past.

He kisses her back at first, arms immediately coming to her sides, body moulding to fit hers, but then he stiffens up, pulls away. He’s panting a little, and that look is still in his eyes, but his body is stiff and he’s angling away from her. She waits for him to find his voice, because he’d better have a damn good explanation.

“Not yet,” he finally says, not looking at her face. “We can’t—not until finals are over and grades are finalised. I’m still your TA. It’s—we could both get in a lot of trouble.”

“Not yet?” she asks, because she wants to focus on that rather than the ‘we can’t’.

“Not yet,” he confirms. “But soon. January. God, January can’t come soon enough.”

She’s trying hard not to feel like it’s a rejection, because even though she knows they’ll get there it sure feels like a no right now. And yet she understands, because she’s gotten to know Bellamy over the past semester, and he’s not one to break rules. Especially ones that have a scholarship depending on them.

But she doesn’t want to not see Bellamy until grades are finalised, because that’s weeks away, and she was never a patient person to begin with. “Can we at least get coffee or something?” she asks, trying not to sound desperate. “Completely platonic, I won’t even touch you. We can tell everyone you’re tutoring me for, I don’t know, next semester or something.”

“You’re not taking my Latin 2, are you?” he asks, suddenly horrified.

“No, I only needed the one course for my history requirement, thank God. I had signed up for Latin 2 originally, but I walked right out of here and changed that the second you read that Catullus poem.”

“Was it that bad?” Bellamy says, trying for a joke.

“No, it was that good,” she says, and from the way his eyes darken she knows he understood exactly what she meant.

“Okay, um. Platonic coffee it is, then. Until January. Good.”

They head to the coffee shop straight away, because classes are over for the semester and neither one really feels like going home. Even if they agreed not to touch each other for the time being, just sitting across from each other in the coffee shop is electrifying, and somewhere in the back of her mind Clarke worries about what it means to be so gone so soon.

They’re walking out, about to go their separate ways, when Bellamy mutters “fuck it” and grabs Clarke, spinning her to face him, and kisses her this time. It’s only seconds before she’s pulling away, looking at him and begging him to understand that she wants to, except.

“Bellamy, we can’t,” she whispers. “Won’t you lose your scholarship?”

“Fuck the scholarship,” he says, and leans in, but she stops him with a hand against his mouth.

“How are you going to buy me dinner with no scholarship?” she asks, and he stops to laugh.

“You make a fair point.” He takes a reluctant step back, lifts a hand to push her hair behind her ear. “One more for the road?” She swats his hand away.

“No, try and keep it in your pants for now. And give me your number—if we can’t be seen together for the next few weeks, we can at least text, right?”

That night, she texts him _what are you wearing?_ When he replies in Latin, she almost comes on the spot.

 

*  *  *

 

Three weeks later, Bellamy opens his door to see Clarke brandishing a sheet of paper in his face. When he finally gets her to stop shaking it enough for him to read it, he sees it’s a printout of her grades for the previous semester. Seconds later, the sheet of paper is on the floor, and he’s struggling to close the door with Clarke in his arms.

Clarke learns a lot more Latin in the spring semester despite dropping the class. She also tops the list of Bellamy’s Actual Favourite Things.

 

 


End file.
